Phi for All

I might agree if the magician was the one holding and shaking the bottle, but it was supposedly a random audience member. I agree with alan2here that it might have something to do with a bottle being more vulnerable from the inside. There is some kind of liquid in the bottom of the bottle, not much but it's there if you watch closely as the bottle "pops". I'm guessing he put a chemical in the bottle just before handing the bottle to the woman, and the glass shard had another chemical on it which created an exothermic reaction when the woman shook it from side to side. The heat caused the thick glass to expand unevenly and Viola! the bottle's bottom breaks free with a slight popping sound. An endothermic reaction would possibly accomplish the same thing, but I think frost would have quickly formed under those hot lights and given it away. Chemical reaction seems much more likely than any kind of percussive method, even if it attacks from inside the bottle.

Funny weird, not funny ha-ha. Why is regular milk disgusting, but low-fat milk with some cream added to it is not? I'm assuming the disgusting part is the fatty texture, which doesn't change by adding cacao and sugar, but maybe the flavors hide the texture for you. Or is regular milk disgusting because you know you're drinking more fat than the lättmjölk has? In that case, you're just fooling yourself by forgetting that you're adding the fat with the cream, perhaps even more than regular milk has. Sorry to nitpick but this is Jump on Seeming Disparities Week and I just forgot to tell everyone else.

What was your purpose for bringing this subject up? What aspects would you like to discuss?

I'm sure that's the answer joshuam168 is looking for, but just about anyone who lives on a corner can do the same thing.

Is this similar to the "my own conception in biological chemistry" thread? That one got closed because you were asked to post your ideas here instead of soliciting email addresses to mail it to, and you failed to respond after ten days. Do you have any further work on your protein concept to show? What you've opened with is vague. Please elaborate.

Proof that cacao makes things less disgusting.

No US president has ever stood a greater statistical chance of dying in office than John McCain would if elected. That's a fact, not an opinion. I know Obama's campaign has targeted the connection with Bush as a strategy, and McCain had to embrace neo-GOP stances he's not happy with in order to get the nod, but I can't help wonder how McCain really feels about carrying that ugly baggage around after what Bush and Rove did to him in the 2000 primaries. It's gotta be killing him, but at least *that* stress would be gone if he wins.

That's my point about the costs. I'd be willing to wager that even normal, respectful library patrons would be harder on the library porn collection than they are on the regular selections. On top of that, I can get a copy of Hot Fuzz for $15, but a copy of Crotch Fuzz is $40.

They'd probably lose federal funding but is there a law that prohibits a local library from loaning porn to members of legal age if the local populace wants it to? Besides moral concerns, I can see how it would be a very expensive decision (even without the loss of funding) and that may be all there is to it. No censorship, just concerns over the high costs of maintaining a county-class pr0n collection.

Hellfire and damnation are abstract punishments. You'd be more apt to receive a logical lambasting here. For instance, if you did support banning certain books, what would they be and why would you justify removing them from human scrutiny?

My 9-year-old understands the art of distraction. She knows that she can divert her parents wrath over one of her misdeeds by diverting our attention away from her. She doesn't fool me one bit, but I let politicians fool me this way all the time. It really doesn't matter who gets into office in a two-party system. Lobbyists work the Reps and the Dems equally and big businesses get even bigger no matter who is at the country's helm. And some of the businesses have gotten SO big that they rival the power of foreign countries. We spend more on defending ourselves from foreign countries than all foreign countries combined spend to defend themselves, but we are almost naked against the mega-corporations. If a foreign power were caught trying to manipulate our politics for profit the way our businesses are doing today, you can bet the public would be outraged and clamoring for war. I think the depraved state of US politics is a direct reflection of the depraved state of US corporate policies. This enemy is a mole working behind enemy lines, with full access to our leadership, our communications and even our national psyche. We say we want change and change hurts the bottom line, rocks the boat and cuts into profits.

Remove ANY book from a library and you murder a part of our world. There are books I won't read but there aren't any books I would ban others from reading.

Informed decisions need information. Decisions on who represents you in government need even more information. Democracies don't work as well when information is controlled. Banning books is banning information. Partisanship is very much like banning information. The platform Reps and Dems don't really want you listening to the other side, so they ridicule and reduce so you don't have to feel like a dummy for not thinking for yourself. I also think the Amish church is a good analogy here. The Amish discovered that too much information (in the form of high school education) caused their young people to leave the church and their culture. Would it be good for the Amish church to ban certain information from their people? You bet, for the church. But I don't think ignorance is good for the individual. So it's really a question of whether or not you consider your choices above those of your "group". If you feel that your choices should be overridden in favor of the group's choices, be prepared to be misrepresented, misinformed and misunderstood. If your "group" focuses on family and hates gays and drugs, it might take some extreme external investigations before *you* find out that your group's leader secretly seeks out homosexual relationships (through prostitutes, let's say) and methamphetamines. It's doubtful your group would ever tell you that kind of stuff on their own (unless you were also a leader). Don't you think you're better off knowing that kind of information? Would you or your group be better off being in the dark about your leader? How should it make you feel to know that, if that information had been censored, you'd still be following that leader?

I don't think it's a grinder. The cranks on most of the old grinders were on top: Plus, it looks like there is a recess for the handle part of the crank, suggesting it might be a portable instrument (no need to recess the handle if it's not traveling). My 6th grade science teacher had an old hand-crank generator to show how your muscles contract when electricity is passed through your body. He made the guys in the class look pretty wimpy, not being able to do a simple thing like let go of the leads. This box looks similar. I'll bet there's something just to the right of the picture that would give it away if we could see it.

You've done this before, I've seen the high water marks on I-10 overpasses. Hell, it's only one percent more humidity than you usually have. Hunker down, son. Good luck and don't take any chances you don't have to take.

That's because they were so full of shit from being lawyers to begin with.

I'm serious! I had no entendre in mind with the question. I just thought that "mates" on a ship might have become common usage for "fast friends" from a nation with such a long and colorful naval history. Or is that just a common analogy that's completely wrong? So what do you call footwear designed to make you look taller, "lifts" or "elevator shoes"? You've just helped me with a tricky part of my screenplay. I needed a way for Colin Firth's character to avoid getting beaten up while in prison. So now I'll just have the leader of the cell block ask Colin what he does to relieve stress....

In my region in the US, we use "pal" or "buddy" for complete strangers we really want to throttle, but can't because there are too many witnesses. "Hey pal, the line's moved," is what you say to the guy who is too busy talking to notice the queue has a 20-foot gap in front of him. "Excuse me, buddy," is what you say to the guy who has chosen to hold a conversation right in front of the main entrance, blocking everyone else from coming in to the building. For strangers who've given no offense, we use "man", "dude" and "guy". Not many terms for women like that. If I was talking to a strange woman in public I would say, "Hey lady," if she was at least 30 or had kids with her. I really don't use a generic term for women under 30. Your "mate" is your spouse in the US. I wonder if you use "mate" in the UK because of your naval history?

Take some more math next year, you went over the 15-letter limit (which we somehow warned you about somewhere when you joined somewhat). You'll fit right in with yourdadonapogos and lolromeoandjuli. Welcome. Have fun posting and thanks for your participation. We appreciate that you could be about a trillion other places but you chose here. Thanks. Well well well, for a guy who knows the answer to everything, you put your fate in my hands pretty quickly. I don't usually touch someone's fate until the third or fourth post, so let's see what you got. Welcome to SFN.

Yes, parts 1 & 3 have malformed video IDs.

To be fair, if you're going to do things like wear funny pants, hunt foxes and say, "Tally ho!", then you should be prepared to have that image used against you. Americans make more films than anyone and filmmakers need stereotypes so they don't have to explain every little detail. Sometimes they need a little old lady from London who lives next door because someone has to be home at 4pm to hear the gunshot and everyone knows little old London ladies will be having tea then.... We Yanks have our share of stereotypes amongst ourselves. We never show a college professor with a Brooklyn accent, while it's practically mandatory for a fireman to have one, even if he's from Seattle. There are farmers in every state but in the movies farmers are all from Iowa or Kansas circa 1950. Oilmen are all from Texas, period. I live for the day I hear someone say, "Excuse me", I turn around and it's Robert De Niro. After hours of exhaustive rehearsal, I think I can honestly say I will have the presence of mind to respond, "You talkin' to me?"

I feel the same as Biden on abortion. It wouldn't be *my* choice but it should be a choice. Set a limit on how late it can happen to avoid the legal labyrinth of "life begins at conception", and then leave it alone. It is the most logical, fair and reasoned approach to satisfy a large, diverse society. Palin has a stance that is at odds with her experience and her actions. She defends her daughter's right to have her child, and to let that be her choice, but wants that choice taken away from all others, or any who would use that choice in a way Palin disagrees with. At that point, it's not really a choice at all, is it?

But if you're campaigning on the basis of not being a Washington insider, doesn't it say something that she decided to take the crappy, corruptive deal while she was still in Alaska? Is she already corrupted, before she steps foot in DC? Or be very, very vocal about why you aren't willing to indulge in uncomfortable exercises. Well, she hired the guy who got the same money for her 10,000 folks as Idaho got for 200,000. It says more about her executive recruitment talents. Which might be just as valid. I totally agree. I was just out there a couple of weeks ago. We walked from our hotel and saw Springsteen at the Sprint Center. Having walked past the Star building, I can understand why they wanted to make fun of anyone who'd pass up opulence to save money. That is one freaking expensive-looking newspaper building. I don't know how long your mayor has been around but I thank him for our pleasant experience. Coming from parched Colorado, it was awesome to see so many water features. You guys are second in fountains only to Venice! Very beautiful. Your downtown is a dream, too. No congestion that I could see. Even on Monday it wasn't crowded, and all the graffiti was in Hallmark verse (like rap with roses). I applaud a mayor who would sacrifice his limo (but not his soul) to help his city.

I am John McCain and I approve this haiku. (POW). Barack Obama: It's not about me but you can sure vote for me. It's hard to avoid an election erection (you prick - tease me more).

Like bascule, I register Democrat in order to vote in the primaries, but I don't follow the party platform enough to call myself a partisan Democrat. The kicker, of course, is that there are really only two parties, so when the arguments start flying, virtually everyone polarizes into the two main camps and even though you may offer up some non-partisan solutions, you've already been labeled. I wonder if partisanship is behind the political tactic I hate the most, when the pols assess their own weaknesses and then accuse their opponents of those same weaknesses. It makes the other guy look bad when he fights back with, "No, *you're* weak on foreign policy!" I also hate all the unchecked "facts" that get thrown around, especially at the conventions, where partisanship is going to keep many people from checking those facts on their own. Partisans don't want to hear anything bad about their "side".